TEXTAREA line terminators revisited

Tom Magliery (mag@ncsa.uiuc.edu)
Tue, 10 Jan 95 18:51:44 EST

In October there was a brief discussion of line terminators in TEXTAREA
fields in forms. Basically, Eric S. asked what the 2.0 spec should say
about line terminators when TEXTAREA fields are submitted in a form; in
particular, is it platform- or implementation-dependent? A couple of
people responded, but no real consensus (other than "consensus by silence")
was reached.

All the spec says on the matter at the moment is:

>When submitting a form, the line terminators are implementation dependent.

My question: "No, really -- what should the client do about
line-delimiting in TEXTAREAs?" More specifically, when I (pretend I'm a
client) submit the contents of (for example) the following TEXTAREA:

+---------------------------------+
| Wheee, this is fun! |
| Whoop-de-doo!! |
+---------------------------------+

, what character(s) should be put in between "fun!" and "Whoop" ?

Possible answers:
(a) <space> (egads, please no)
(b) CR
(c) LF
(d) CRLF
(e) any of (b),(c),(d) -- platform-dependent
(f) other?

If the answer leans towards (e), is it therefore the server-side script's
responsibility to watch out for different kinds of line terminators?

mag

--
Tom Magliery ** NCSA ** 605 E Springfield ** Champaign IL 61820 ** USA